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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29110683">Quick Study</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJLenoire/pseuds/AJLenoire'>AJLenoire</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drinking &amp; Talking, Drinking Games, F/M, Good God There Is So Much Pining, How Do You Write Smut Without Kissing, I Swear This Is A Oneshot I Just Can't Write Anything Short, Insomnia, Introspection, Late Night Conversations, Light Angst, Love Confessions, Mild Sexual Content, Mild Smut, Minor Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish, Monmouth Manufacturing (Raven Cycle), Mutual Pining, Post-The Dream Thieves, Sharing a Bed, True Love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:53:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>18,349</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29110683</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJLenoire/pseuds/AJLenoire</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Gansey,” she said, “Spirits don’t just… <em>appear</em> on the C—on the ley line. At least, not on St Mark’s Eve they don’t. The spirits that appear on St Mark’s Eve aren’t the dead. They’re the… the… dead-to-be.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Richard Gansey III/Blue Sargent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>The Raven Boys fanfic</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Quick Study</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I literally said out loud when I was 10k into this "how did this happen? I didn't set out to write this. It's like herding sheep."</p><p>This takes place somewhere after <em>The Dream Thieves</em> but before <em>Blue Lily, Lily Blue</em>. That scene near the end where Gansey and Blue go for a drive lives rent free in my mind.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The tail end of the sweltering Virginia summer was sweet and golden and sticky as fresh honey. Blue was due to start her senior year at Mountain View High School in just over a week, the boys to start their own senior year at Aglionby just a week after that. It was impossible to know which occupant of the Camaro was most enthused by the word ‘senior’.</p><p>The air conditioning in the Pig had broken, again, and neither Adam nor Gansey had gotten around to fixing it. For once, Blue was glad for Noah’s being so cold, and as she was squeezed between him and Adam in the backseat, she watched the sun prepare to dip below the horizon. The days were getting shorter, now, and the sky was just beginning to shift from blue to orange as the Pig pulled into the parking lot of Monmouth Manufacturing.</p><p>They’d spent the day as they almost always did; searching for Glendower. Honestly, Blue felt like they were no closer than they had been at the start of the day, but she didn’t mind. She’d been thankful for the distraction. It had been several weeks since Maura had disappeared and Blue had yet to hear anything more from her mother other than the fact that she was somehow underground. Sitting around and feeling useless whilst someone was possibly in danger and definitely beyond your reach was an awful feeling even when the someone wasn’t your mother.</p><p>That her eighteenth birthday was also fast approaching didn’t help. Having had no friends for her past seventeen birthdays, Blue’s birthday was always a family affair. Normally, Maura would make sludgy, undercooked brownies, but of course she wasn’t currently present. Blue still didn’t know if she was angry with her mother or scared for her—a bit of both, she supposed. Either way, she hadn’t made mention of her birthday to any of the boys. None of them, not even quiet Noah, who had a way of finding things out on account of his ability to become invisible, knew it was coming up.</p><p>And yet, she swore she saw Ronan’s eyes linger on her just a moment longer than normal when he said, “I want a drink. You guys want anything?”</p><p>Gansey, who was sat in a chair and flicking through his journal, didn’t look up as he said, “Just none of that crappy beer you always drink.”</p><p>And just like that; the evening was decided. Ronan was going to get drunk, which was not all that uncommon, but Gansey was going to get drunk with him, which was <em>decidedly</em> uncommon.</p><p>Ronan rolled his eyes. It was a strange word to use when Ronan did it; <em>roll</em>. Rolling was round and smooth. Everything Ronan did was sharp, and if you weren’t careful, you’d cut yourself on his glower. “Sure thing, <em>your majesty</em>,” he drawled, and even that was razor-edged. Blue wondered if, when it came to Ronan, he’d spent so long being sharp and dangerous that he’d forgotten how not to be, even among his closest friends. Even now, she only caught bare glimpses of his gentleness, like when he held Chainsaw, or the mice at the Barns.</p><p>Eyes rolled, Ronan looked at Adam. “Parrish?”</p><p>“Nothing for me, thanks,” Adam replied, and this brought on a round of groaning.</p><p>“Don’t give me that shit,” Ronan snapped. “Pick something.”</p><p>Adam just shrugged. He didn’t drink—not like the other Aglionby boys, anyway. He couldn’t afford alcohol and he couldn’t afford the time to drink it and he certainly couldn’t afford a hangover. But the other students, with their hours and days and weeks of free time, summer stretching out before them with all its balmy possibilities, they had little else to do <em>besides</em> drink. “What…” he began, “What do you recommend?”</p><p>Ronan sneered, but as with most of the harsh looks and barbed comments he gave his friends these days—especially Adam—it lacked any real malice. It was pure reflex. “What do I <em>recommend?</em>”</p><p>Now Adam rolled his eyes. When he did it, it <em>was</em> a roll. Soft and smooth, like his accent. “Fine, then. I’ll have what Blue has.”</p><p>Blue blinked. “Me?”</p><p>At that, Gansey looked up from his journal, eyebrows raised. “Well, of course, Jane!” he exclaimed genially. “Can’t get drunk with us if you don’t drink!”</p><p>“But… I <em>don’t</em> drink,” she said blankly, and she didn’t. Sure, there were kids at her school who drank, kids who hosted house parties as wild as any Aglionby boy’s—even if it was on a much lower budget—but she wasn’t friends with any of those kids. She wasn’t really friends with <em>anyone</em> at her school, she never had been. She’d put too much effort into looking eccentric and unpredictable and weird. The fact that she only hung around with Aglionby boys—specifically, callous Ronan, watchful Adam and quiet Noah—had only added to this. Anyone who might’ve thought about inviting her to get drunk with them would’ve been immediately met with a laugh and a comment like <em>she’s probably getting drunk with the raven boys instead</em>.</p><p>None of this made Blue feel upset or awkward. In fact, she kind of liked it. But right now, she was hesitant, and reminded of just how different she was from all of them. Sure, they were all different from each other, but she was just that little bit more separated; because she didn’t go to Aglionby, because she was a girl, because she’d never been to a house party.</p><p>Gansey laughed. It wasn’t the nice laugh that made her worry about the fact that she couldn’t kiss him or the fact that she <em>wanted</em> to kiss him in the first place, but it was still a very nice laugh. “You don’t?” he said. “I thought the consumption of alcohol was one of the primary ways women rebelled against patriarchal expectations—along with strange skirts and short hair.” He looked her very pointedly up and down.</p><p>Blue scowled. “Sure, in the 1920s,” she replied. Her Henrietta accent slipped out more when she was around the boys for the same reason Adam tried to clip his down; Gansey was immeasurably different from her, and they all knew it. “But in case it escaped your notice, women are allowed to drink now.”</p><p>Gansey was undeterred. “Then what about that good old-fashioned teenaged rebellion?” he suggested.</p><p><em>Not much to rebel against when your mother’s not here</em>, Blue thought.</p><p>She wasn’t sure why she was picking so much at Gansey’s point—maybe because that was just what they did. They bickered until it turned into a debate and until it turned back into bickering. But as she really considered what Ronan was really <em>saying</em>, the true offer he had put forward—an evening spent with her boys in the same manner as her day—she found she didn’t want to refuse.</p><p>“Are you dreaming, or am I limited to whatever the store has?” she asked. Her real question was implicit. It was why Adam had said he’d drink whatever Blue chose, rather than whatever Gansey chose.</p><p>Ronan gave her a withering look. “I’m not a fucking Walmart,” he said, then continued, “Of course I’m dreaming it. I lost my ID, I’d have to dream up a new one, anyway.”</p><p>Blue had long since grown immune to Ronan’s glowers, and thought of the mixed drinks Maura, Calla and Persephone would make on Sundays. She’d tried several of them just out of curiosity but had never been able to get around the flavour of the alcohol itself. That was probably because Persephone always made them and Persephone’s hand always tended to ‘slip’. They were fruity things, though, and she liked fruit—when it wasn’t underneath a yoghurt.</p><p>“To<em>day</em>, Sargent,” Ronan said impatiently. It amused her when he called her by her last name. Such a quintessentially masculine, private-school, <em>Aglionby</em> thing to do. But it was better than ‘maggot’.</p><p>“Sex on the beach,” she said, picking at random one of the Sunday cocktails, the first one that jumped to mind. She realised just what she’d said about two seconds after she’d said it, and felt her cheeks flush.</p><p>Ronan barked a laugh. She expected him to make a rude joke—they all did—but he just said, “And you, Parrish? Want some <em>sex on the beach</em>?”</p><p>When Ronan said it, it didn’t sound like he was offering Adam a drink.</p><p>Adam seemed unfazed. “Sure,” he said. “I like cranberry juice.”</p>
<hr/><p>Blue had spent so many days with her Raven Boys by this point that she had lost count, but this was the first evening; the first <em>night</em>. They’d spent time together at night before, but it wasn't the same. The actual darkness of the sky wasn’t what made it different. It was the thin layer of <em>night-time</em> that seemed to be laid over everything, a sheet of lilac silk that tamped everything sensible and restrained and reasonable so that everyone’s more reckless, more primal, more… <em>Ronan</em> side could come out. No wonder he loved the night so much.</p><p>They sat in the middle of the main room, in a circle, surrounded by Gansey’s discarded Glendower leads and Ronan’s discarded toys. Blue wondered, as she always did whenever she really looked at the boyish chaos that was Monmouth Manufacturing, if any of these objects were dream things.</p><p>The sex on the beach cocktail, as it turned out, was quite nice. It was just as uncomfortably strong as when Persephone made it, but considering Ronan had been the dreamer, she wasn’t surprised. It was also, Blue realised after a while, self-replenishing. She wondered if that was intentional, and didn’t much care either way. The ice also didn’t seem to be melting.</p><p>She was glad that she hadn’t just acquiesced to whatever bizarre drinks Ronan and Gansey had chosen, not least because their drinks didn’t self-replenish and they had to keep getting up to go to the fridge in the kitchen-bathroom-laundry to get more, and she wasn’t currently very confident in her ability to stand up and walk to the fridge without making a fool of herself. It didn’t seem to occur to them that they could just move the fridge. Or perhaps it did, but some code of teenaged boys prevented them from doing anything to make their living space more sensible. She was, after all, an unusually sensible teen.</p><p>“I’ve half a mind to ask Glendower to let us live in this night forever,” Gansey remarked with a contented sigh. He was lying in a patch of evening sunlight on a blanket they’d dragged from Noah’s room. Ever since they had discovered he was dead, and didn’t need to sleep, they’d started co-opting his room for other things. They had not, Blue noticed, bothered to move Gansey’s <em>bed</em> into that room, and it was still shoved in the far corner of the main room, separated from their group by the enormous model of Henrietta. It was as exposed as he was, as the shelves filled with boxes of his research, his most singular passion laid bare. She reassessed the room and decided that maybe they hadn’t moved the bed because, really, it wouldn’t change anything. Monmouth would still be a portrait of Gansey’s soul, just like the Pig. Whether his physical body was there didn’t really matter.</p><p>For a moment, she pictured what Gansey must look like when he slept. It was no secret that he struggled with sleep—the evidence of that was sprawling across the room in meticulously crafted cardboard—and maybe that was why she couldn’t quite picture it. Gansey was always so animated, whether he was the Aglionby princeling or the scholarly boy, but sleep was peaceful and still. Did he look like that when he slept? Or was he still somehow lively and jovial. Something in her chest ached, and she told herself not to think about how she would never see Gansey sleeping to know.</p><p>Both Adam and Blue had different intentions of what to ask Glendower when they found and awoke him, but in that moment, both of them could see the appeal of Gansey’s suggestion. If they could live forever in this night, there was no need to ask for money, or Gansey’s life.</p><p>“Just drink your fucking cider,” Ronan muttered sourly, taking a swig of beer, but there was the barest hint of fondness in his expression; a whisper in his wry smile. This was the Gansey they all loved. Not the congresswoman’s son that had so intimidated Adam, not the President Cell Phone that had so infuriated Blue, not Richard Campbell Gansey III but <em>Gansey</em>.</p><p><em>That’s all there is</em>.</p><p>Blue pushed that thought aside before it could really take root in her mind, alcohol making the task a lot easier than normal. She’d never drunk this much alcohol before—she’d never had cause to. Now she understood why they called it <em>social lubricant</em>. She did indeed feel socially lubricated, like her worries had been buried deeper—or, no, like she was underwater, and they were not, instead muffled and distant.</p><p>She swore she would give herself this. This night to not worry about Gansey’s death, about Maura’s disappearance, about finding Glendower—about any of that. There was nothing any of them could do tonight to change it, not after night had fallen and they were all too drunk to be able to drive. This night, a few days before her eighteenth birthday, she would keep for herself. And she didn’t have to look at Ronan to know that in some way he must have been thinking the same. She still didn’t know all the details of what had happened in the dream Cabeswater, with Joseph Kavinsky. In some ways, she didn’t much care; dying didn’t suddenly make someone not an asshole. In other ways, she didn’t <em>need</em> to know, because the fundamentals were the same. Things were changing, and there was no telling who would be around when it was all over. They had to enjoy what they had whilst they had it.</p><p>Blue thought about the sex on the beach cocktail and the darkening sky and her sudden turn towards the philosophical and wondered if the three were somehow connected. She felt the urge to say ‘god<em>damn</em>’ the way Ronan or sometimes even Kavinsky had said it, like they surprised themselves with the word that came out of their mouths. As in, god<em>damn</em>, she understood now why Ronan loved the night so much. It was sweet and sultry, the molasses tone of the Henrietta accent made physical as one of Ronan’s dream things.</p><p>“I’m bored,” Noah said, in that soft, melancholy way of his, breaking a small lull in their meandering conversation. Gansey wasn’t sure how their conversation had started on the subject of that cave in Cabeswater, the one he intended to investigate sometime next week, and now they were in the middle of a debate about women’s lingerie but it had and they were. “Can we <em>do</em> something?”</p><p>“We are,” said Ronan. He was sprawled out across a pile of cushions, taking up as much space as the other four put together. It wasn’t just his physical position, it was the feeling that exuded from him, like an object that needed to be bubble-wrapped before it could be safely delivered. “We’re getting drunk out of our fucking skulls.”</p><p>“Aw, shut it, Ronan,” Adam said, not quite fondly, but not quite <em>not</em> fondly, either. Either the late hour or the alcohol or some combination of the two had allowed his accent to start slipping through again. He seemed, Blue noticed, to be inching incrementally closer to Ronan, even though he wasn’t bubble-wrapped.</p><p>Turning to Noah, Gansey said, “Maybe Ronan can dream you up some special ghost liquor or something.”</p><p>“It’s after hours, store’s closed,” said Ronan, at the same time as Noah said, “It’s not that. I just can’t eat. Or drink.”</p><p>Gansey remembered how Noah would chew on a plastic spoon sometimes. Was it that he missed the sensation of chewing? Or was it Noah’s simple fascination with holding physical objects now that he was sometimes unable to do so?</p><p>As if coming to the same conclusion, Blue fished an un-melt-able ice cube out from the sex on the beach jug Ronan had dreamt for her and handed it to Noah. He was disproportionately delighted with this gift, maybe because he was, for the first time in seven years, touching something that was colder than he was, and stopped petting her hair to hold it in his hands, mesmerised.</p><p>“I’m with Noah,” she said. “If I wanted to just lie on cushions and drink myself stupid, I could’ve done that at home. Let’s do something.”</p><p>“What, like a—drinking game?” Adam asked, looking up from his own jug of sex on the beach. He kept picking out the cherries to eat them and they kept reappearing.</p><p>Blue shrugged. “I dunno. What do Aglionby boys do when they get drunk?” She looked over at Ronan and Gansey.</p><p>Gansey, for some reason, flushed red. He was tanner than Ronan and Noah, but Ronan was Irish and Noah was dead, and the blush showed up very clearly. Blue pretended not to notice. Ronan said, “Blow up white Mitsubishis.”</p><p>Flushing slightly less red now, Gansey turned to Blue. “What do Mountain View girls do when <em>they</em> get drunk?” he asked her.</p><p>She thought for a moment. “I guess they play drinking games,” she said. “But I don’t know for sure.”</p><p>“Too much of a weirdo to get invited to the good parties?” Ronan asked, but though his words might have suggested derision, his tone was approving. Blue remembered thinking how Ronan’s praise would always hold more weight because it was almost impossible to gain, and even now it felt like some incredible achievement to hear that note in his voice.</p><p>Adam looked at Ronan, who noticed his gaze but pretended not to, and Blue, who noticed his gaze and pretended not to, and thought about how similar they were in some ways. Something in his chest felt tight. It wasn’t of Cabeswater, of the disaster that had been that weekend with Gansey’s parents. It was something much smaller than that, something Adam Parrish. Something much <em>larger</em> than that.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Blue, “That’s why I’m drinking with a boy who can pull things out of his dreams.” She’d meant it to sound sarcastic, but when she said it aloud it was inexplicably hilarious to her ears and she almost didn’t get the last few words out for how suddenly she was laughing. She was feeling very socially lubricated indeed.</p><p>“Guys,” said Noah, finally looking away from his ice cube. “Come <em>on</em>. Pick something.”</p><p>“I could throw you out the window again,” Ronan suggested. Gansey and Noah both said <em>no</em> at the same time but in very different tones. Ronan just grinned at them both—which was to say that he parted his lips and bared his teeth.</p><p>Tipping his head back, Gansey finished off his cider. Blue tried not to look at the bob of his throat as he swallowed. Getting to his feet to fetch another from the kitchen-bathroom-laundry, Gansey said, “Jane, you pick something.”</p><p>She looked at him. “Why me?” she asked, feeling certain there was some kind of joke she was missing.</p><p>“New blood,” Ronan told her. What he <em>didn’t</em> tell her was that, with the exception of Kavinsky’s substance parties, none of <em>them</em> had been to any parties, either. Gansey had been too interested in Glendower, too uninterested in keeping up his presidential façade. Ronan just didn’t like people and he especially didn’t like a hundred people crammed into someone’s house trying to make out with everyone. Adam didn’t have, or really want, any Aglionby friends outside of Gansey and Ronan. Noah was dead.</p><p>Blue thought for a moment. “I think I only know the basic ones,” she said. “Spin-the-Bottle, Never-Have-I-Ever, Mr-and-Mrs—”</p><p>“What’s Mr-and-Mrs?” Adam interrupted. He was frowning, and Blue was abruptly reminded of when he’d first spoken to her after her shift at Nino’s that night. How she’d thought his elegant face was made for frowning. Memories, it seemed, hovered closer to the surface when alcohol was involved.</p><p>Blue smiled. For some reason this question amused her; she wanted to laugh again. “It’s pretty simple,” she said. “You pick someone to be the, uh, ‘Mr’ and they ask questions about themselves—like, I’d ask you what my favourite colour was, or whatever. If you guess right, I drink. If you guess wrong, you drink.”</p><p>“Could be interesting,” Gansey remarked, returning from the bathroom with another cider in hand. Blue pretended not to notice that he sat down a fair amount closer to her than he’d been sitting when he’d gotten up. “But doesn’t that put you at a disadvantage though, Jane?”</p><p>“Puts you at a disadvantage for me, too,” she pointed out. “Adam, what <em>is</em> my favourite colour?”</p><p>Adam blinked. “Uh… blue?”</p><p>Ronan cackled. “Of course not!” he cried, and when Adam looked expectantly at Blue, she shook her head. As Adam dutifully took a drink, Ronan said, “It’s <em>green</em>.”</p><p>“You’re right,” Blue exclaimed, stunned.</p><p>Gansey and Adam both stared at him. “How on <em>earth</em> did you know that?” Gansey asked, sounding both impressed and slightly offended.</p><p>Ronan shrugged. “She likes trees. Nature. <em>Green</em> stuff.”</p><p>Blue nodded. “He’s right.”</p><p>“I am,” Ronan agreed. “Now take a drink of that cocktail I made you.”</p><p>She did. “Ronan, since you got it right, you go next.”</p><p>Ronan thought for a moment. This could possibly be difficult, as Gansey knew him better than anyone alive and would almost certainly be able to blurt out the right answer at once. Of course, Gansey could also be terrifically clueless at times. Deciding that nothing worth doing was easy, and that included his own amusement, Ronan pointed to Gansey and said, “What… was the first thing I pulled out of my dreams?”</p><p>Gansey didn’t immediately answer, which Ronan considered a victory all on its own. “It was…” Gansey muttered, answering as slowly as Ronan had asked. He kneaded the knuckles of his left fist against his forehead, alcohol clouding his mind.</p><p>“A night horror?” Noah asked, looking even paler than usual.</p><p>“No fair, you’re not drinking,” Ronan said, and Noah pouted. Ronan added, “It wasn’t a night horror.” He hadn’t dreamt of night horrors until <em>after</em> his father had been murdered.</p><p>Gansey finally offered hesitantly, “…flowers?”</p><p>In response, Ronan took a drink. Gansey grinned. Ronan said, “Your turn.”</p><p>“Jane.” Gansey turned to Blue, rationalising it to himself with the fact that she hadn’t had the opportunity to guess yet. “What was the first thing you ever said to me?”</p><p>Blue opened her mouth to answer, then hesitated. Gansey had, possibly deliberately, probably unintentionally, pulled her into something of a trap. “<em>You</em>-you, or… St-Mark’s-Eve-you?”</p><p>“Me-me,” he replied. There was something strange in his hazel eyes, and for a moment she forgot that Adam and Ronan and Noah were still in the room. She felt as though she and Gansey were right in front of one another, but in reality they were no closer than any two friends sitting in a circle would be.</p><p>“I remember <em>that</em>,” she exclaimed, almost annoyed. How he’d been irritatingly impressive, frustratingly tan and tall and handsome. “I said ‘can I help you?’ and I said it in a way that made clear I didn’t want to. You didn’t seem to notice.”</p><p>He laughed. Again, not <em>the</em> laugh, but <em>a</em> laugh. “I noticed,” he said, “I was just sticking my neck out for Adam. And I don’t know about all of you, but I for one am very glad I did.” He raised his drink towards Blue as if toasting her, then took a swig.</p><p>Blue turned to Noah to have an excuse to turn away <em>from</em> Gansey. “Noah,” she said. “Why don’t <em>you</em> ask a question? And whoever gets it right can make the rest of us drink.”</p><p>Noah nodded and looked to Adam. “Do you remember the first thing <em>I</em> said to <em>you?</em>”</p><p>Adam opened his mouth to answer, then faltered. It was like when Gansey had asked him Noah’s last name. He’d been sure he knew right up until the moment of asking. “Uh… Oh! I remember. You said ‘you’re not Gansey, who’re you?’”</p><p>Noah nodded again, and Adam pointed to Gansey to take another drink. Gansey obliged.</p><p>“You guys are making this too <em>easy</em>,” Ronan sneered. “Parrish: when we all went to the Barns to bury the night horror, what was wrong with the calendar?”</p><p>Adam had to think for a moment. “It was all the same month,” he said, but Ronan shook his head.</p><p>“More <em>specific</em> than that, Parrish, this isn’t grade school.”</p><p>Adam sighed like a put-upon parent. “It was all… Aprils,” he said, and Ronan nodded smartly as he took a drink.</p><p>“I think the point of the game is to ask more personal questions,” Adam muttered. Ronan flipped him off.</p><p>“I agree,” said Gansey. He seemed somehow both excited <em>and</em> frustrated. “Adam—ask me something personal.”</p><p>Adam blinked at him. “Uh, alright. I had a crush on a girl at my old school—before I came to Aglionby. I told you all about her. What was her name?”</p><p>This fairly stymied Gansey, and he had to think long and hard before he finally said, in a tone that suggested he knew he wasn’t right, “…Megan?”</p><p>“Maggie.” It was Ronan, not Adam, who corrected Gansey. Turning to Blue and speaking with a swiftness that suggested he didn’t want the conversation to dwell on this—which was odd because Ronan generally didn’t care where the conversation dwelled—“Sargent, what’s my middle name?”</p><p>Blue blinked, momentarily baffled. “Uh… Niall?” she guessed, and Ronan scowled, then took a drink.</p><p>“I thought you said <em>we</em> were being too easy,” Noah remarked, and Ronan threw a bottle cap at his head. It passed right through him. Noah pouted again.</p><p>Blue turned to Gansey, rationalising it in her head that she hadn’t asked <em>him</em> a question yet. “When you first came to that reading my Mom did—” It hurt a little to think of Maura, but not as much as she had expected. She wasn’t as angry as she had expected, either. “—what card did you pull first?”</p><p>Gansey smiled. It was an unusually private-seeming smile considering there were three other people in the room. Or rather, it wasn’t the smile that seemed so private, but whatever was in his eyes. “Yours,” he said. “The Page of Cups.”</p><p>Something—the night, the alcohol, the way he spoke, the way he looked at her; some combination of all those things—made her blush.</p>
<hr/><p>They played until long after the sky had gone black and the stars had come out and a slight chill settled in the air of Monmouth Manufacturing. There was always a slight chill in the main room at night on account of how much of the walls were window panels and how many of the window panels were damaged. After the slick heat of the day, however, it was welcomed.</p><p>After they grew tired of playing games, they told each other bizarre stories that weren’t especially impressive when the audience was sober, but were absolutely hilarious when they were all drunk. Blue told the boys about the time she’d tried to run away; Gansey told them about the time he’d found the photo of Ronan in his Boy Scouts uniform; even Noah recounted his truly disastrous sixteenth birthday, in which his old red mustang had ended up wrapped around a tree and a magnificently drunk Noah had just laughed.</p><p>He finished the story with a rueful, “I wish I could get that drunk again. Just once.” He eyed the sex on the beach cocktail longingly, fingers closing around his un-melt-able ice cube in a perfect imitation of how Ronan had held a baby Chainsaw.</p><p>“I can’t imagine being so drunk I wouldn’t care about crashing my car,” Gansey remarked, sounding equal parts impressed by Noah having done it and horrified that it might be possible. He couldn’t imagine not caring about the Pig crashing anymore than he could imagine not caring about Ronan dying.</p><p>“God…” Blue groaned, and put her hands over her face. They were all lying on their backs now, in a circle, legs forming the points, heads forming the center. Gansey was on her right, Noah on her left. “I feel… strange.”</p><p>Gansey laughed. It was neither <em>the</em> laugh, nor was it the ‘a’ laugh from earlier. It was something rather less constrained than the latter but not so genuine and relaxed as the former; real elation made greater, almost hysterical, by the alcohol. “That means it’s working!” he told her delightedly, clearly feeling very ‘strange’ himself.</p><p>“Fuckin’ lightweights,” Ronan growled from Gansey’s right. He was hyperaware of Adam on the floor on his left. It burned to have him so close; like ice on bare skin.</p><p>“I did<em> tell </em>you I don’t drink,” Blue remarked, too amused to put any real annoyance into her voice. “Hey, what’s the time?”</p><p>Gansey lifted his arm to check his watch, then realised he hadn’t lifted his arm at all, he’d just <em>thought</em> about it. This little confusion allowed Adam to beat him to answering Blue’s question. “Just coming up for eleven.”</p><p>Blue sat straight up. “Shit!” she hissed, and the four boys all gave their own version of Ronan’s short, sharp bark of laughter in honour of her swearing so frankly. “I have to get back—Calla will<em> kill</em> me.”</p><p>Noah also sitting up, frowned. “You sure that’s a good idea?” he asked dolefully. “You’re all too drunk to drive.” Gansey wondered just how much of Noah’s concern was genuine and how much was an attempt to get Blue to stay a little longer. He was always so much <em>more</em> when she was around. That was the normal part—or, as normal as the fact that Blue was a psychic amplifier and Noah was a ghost allowed anything to be. The <em>not</em> normal part, the <em>less</em> normal part, was how Gansey felt the same. More present, more grounded, more like a participant in his life instead of a spectator.</p><p>Awkwardly, Blue pushed herself to her feet. She’d never been especially graceful but she was especially <em>un</em>graceful right now. “I can walk,” she said. “I know the way.”</p><p>Now Gansey sat up. “Do you want me to walk with you?” he asked.</p><p>Blue narrowed her eyes at him, but it didn’t hold much heat because she was still preoccupied about going home and still too drunk to really make anger stick. She was the shore of a beach, waves lapping away everything until only smooth sand and pretty little seashells remained. “I don’t need a—a—”</p><p>“Chaperone?”</p><p>Blue’s eyebrows did a spectacular impression of Calla’s—the psychic would’ve been proud, Gansey thought. “I don’t need a dictionary, either,” she told him. Gansey wondered when—or if—he’d ever learn not to finish Blue’s sentences for her. On the other hand, there was something about the way she glowered at him that made his heart hum.</p><p>“It’s pitch-black out and you’re drunk as shit,” Ronan muttered. He hadn’t sat up, but Blue was still surprised he’d spoken at all. His tone was flat, the words had crawled out of his mouth compared to how he normally shot them out. “Just sleep here and sneak home tomorrow.”</p><p>Now Blue stared. Ronan’s eyes were closed, and now that Noah was sat up, he had enough space to raise his arms and tuck his hands behind his head. Adam was looking at him whilst trying not to look at him.</p><p>“Ronan—” Gansey started, but Ronan interrupted him.</p><p>“What? Parrish is gonna sleep here,” he pointed out. This had not actually been discussed at any point, but St Agnes was considerably further than 300 Fox Way and Adam didn’t mind the occasional sleep over at Monmouth so long as it was just the occasional sleepover. “You can take Noah’s room.”</p><p>“Hey…” Noah murmured.</p><p>“You don’t <em>sleep</em>, Noah,” Ronan said. “Be a fucking gentleman or whatever.”</p><p>Blue looked at Noah. “It’s fine,” she said, “I really <em>should</em> get back.” The conviction in her voice was immediately undermined by the fact that when she took a step forward, she tripped over her own feet.</p><p>Gansey leapt to his feet with a speed Ronan and Adam didn’t often see and <em>definitely</em> didn’t often see when he was drunk. Blue was aware of the sensation of falling for the barest second, and then the universe had contracted down to the grip of Gansey’s hand on her arm, the vice of each individual finger wrapped around her bicep, his greater height and weight anchoring her without even trying.</p><p>“Whoa, there!” Gansey cried, like he was walking down a dock towards his family yacht and announcing his arrival. Blue righted herself, but he didn’t let go right away. When he did, it was like he’d been shocked. One second his hand was wrapped around her arm, the next there was two feet of distance between them and all Blue could think about was how much larger he was, how his fingers fit around her bicep, how her fingers definitely wouldn’t fit around his.</p><p><em>Oh, Lord</em>, she thought, abruptly remembering how he’d been on the rowing team, and wishing she hadn’t.</p><p>“Just sleep in Noah’s room before you get yourself killed walking home,” Ronan snarled, his irritable tone contrasting entirely his statement. “I don’t need that fucking paperwork.”</p><p>“It would make an interesting vignette for a college application letter,” Gansey said lightly. He curled his hand into a loose fist, like he was restraining himself from shaking it, or preserving whatever sensation echoes on his palm.</p><p>Shooting Gansey another Calla-worthy glare, Blue wondered just how accurate her statement about Calla had actually been. Calla knew Blue was out with the boys—Blue was <em>always</em> out with the boys. And though it was one thing to go for a drive with Gansey in the middle of the night and return an hour or so later, how different was it really to stay out late? She was still sensible—not sensible enough to come home at a reasonable hour, maybe, but sensible for a teenager—and she was still not kissing anyone.</p><p>“I hate to say it, but I agree with Ronan,” Adam drawled. His voice held all the honeyed warmth of the day, like the sun had climbed inside him instead of under the horizon. “You’re pretty drunk.”</p><p>If Adam was agreeing with Ronan, that was enough to give Blue pause. It also pointed out the fact that Calla <em>might</em> be angry if Blue came home late, but she would <em>definitely</em> be angry if Blue came home <em>drunk</em>.</p><p>“<em>Pshaw</em>,” Blue waved a hand, grinning at the others despite not knowing <em>why</em> she was grinning. The sex on the beach cocktail made the already-slurred word—was it even really a word?—sound even more slurred, like she was trying to say ‘shawl’, but the letters got all mixed up in her mouth. “I didn’t know you all cared so much.”</p><p>That was a lie, but it was easier than the truth. She sat back down, the memory of Gansey’s fingers searing her skin, and took another sip of sex on the beach cocktail.</p>
<hr/><p>Despite his vague indignation, Noah was actually quite pleased that Blue was staying the night in Monmouth. It was past two a.m. before Adam finally announced he was too drunk and too tired to do anything besides sleep, and everyone else took it as a cue that they should probably sleep, too. Blue had stopped drinking her sex on the beach cocktail around midnight, but she still felt light-headed.</p><p>Adam hadn’t really spoken much after announcing he was tired, simply going over to the sofa in the corner, removing his shoes, and flopping across it. Within minutes, he’d started snoring. Shortly after that, Ronan had gotten up too, mumbled something that could possibly have been a <em>good night</em> to Gansey, Noah and Blue, thrown a blanket over Adam and shuffled off into his own room. Now that he was in control of his dreams, he no longer locked his bedroom door at night for fear of what might break out. Gansey suspected there were other reasons why Ronan didn’t lock his door, reasons related to his throwing a blanket over Adam, but he hadn’t said anything to Ronan because Ronan would rather do just about anything than talk about his feelings.</p><p>Noah led Blue and Gansey to his room not because they didn’t know where it was but because it was still technically <em>Noah’s room</em> and there was a certain level of privacy that title ensured. It had been the boiler room back when Monmouth Manufacturing had been manufacturing, now it was the bedroom of a ghost boy. Blue had seen Noah’s room before, and a part of her still wondered how there was a bed and a desk and a bookshelf—albeit an empty bookshelf—when Noah had certainly not been the one to move the furniture in there and had <em>definitely</em> not been the one to buy it.</p><p>“It’s not much,” Noah admitted. “But it’s okay for one night.”</p><p>“It most certainly is <em>not</em>,” Gansey exclaimed. Blue wondered if he was behaving more like Richard Campbell Gansey III because he was drunk or if she just <em>thought</em> he was behaving more like Richard Campbell Gansey III because <em>she</em> was drunk.</p><p>Gansey put a hand on the bedspread and when he took it away, a thin layer of dust covered his fingers. It was not the soft, fluffy dust that came from living in an old manor house that hadn’t lived in for several years, but the gritty, grimy dust that came from living in a warehouse that had never been meant to be lived in at all.</p><p>Noah sighed. “In my defence,” he said morosely, “I don’t use the bed.”</p><p>A small laugh bubbled up from inside Blue. “It’s fine, Noah, really. Thank you for letting me stay in your room.”</p><p>Gansey made a noise to show he still wasn’t convinced, and pulled the comforter off Noah’s bed, shaking it to dislodge as much of the dust as possible. Blue had to fight the urge to laugh again because there was something so ridiculous about seeing him violently waving around a comforter.</p><p>“Oh…” Noah said mildly, and when Blue turned she struggled to see him. He was fading, growing smudgy around the edges. He was not quite a boy anymore, rather the <em>idea</em> of a boy. Even as she looked at him, she struggled to remember what he looked like. Noah sighed again. “I guess I <em>have</em> been hanging out with you guys all day,” he admitted.</p><p>“You can use some of my energy, if you want,” offered Blue. Gansey had stopped shaking the comforter to watch as Noah faded. She could just make out Noah’s head as he shook it.</p><p>“It’s alright,” he said, “I’m kind of… <em>tired</em>.”</p><p>Even the way he said the word <em>tired</em> sounded tired to Blue’s ears. She was suddenly hit with an overwhelming wave of pity for this boy, this dead boy she called her friend. She wanted to hug him, but even if she could see where his arms and torso were, she knew her arms would pass right through him.</p><p>“If you change your mind…” she said, and Noah gave a vague smile before vanishing entirely.</p><p>For a few moments, neither she nor Gansey said anything, then Gansey gave the comforter a final shake and laid it back down on the bed. It still looked a little grimy, and he frowned at it.</p><p>“If you want, I can sleep in here and you can take my bed,” he said to Blue.</p><p>The idea of sleeping in Gansey’s bed made a hundred different thoughts jump into Blue’s mind, ranging from a girlishly-excited <em>I could sleep in a <strong>boy’s</strong> bed?</em> to a much less innocent <em>I wonder if it would smell like him</em>. Unwittingly, she remembered the night of the drive. She wanted so badly to ask Gansey if he still thought about it, like she did. If he still wished he could kiss her. But they’d sworn never to speak of it again, and with Adam in just the next room… it would feel even more cruel than it already was.</p><p>“No,” she said to Gansey. She wasn’t sure what the expression on his face was. Relief? Disappointment? Longing? She didn’t know. It was probably better that way. “I’ll be just fine here.”</p>
<hr/><p>It was not fine.</p><p>Blue stripped off her tights and all but the bottom-most layer of her layered dresses, slipping in between the blankets. They were still musty and a little cold, and she debated putting one of the other dress layers back on before burrowing further into the blankets. They smelled, somehow, like Noah. Or maybe Noah smelled of them. It was a comforting scent, but sleep did not come. She realised within a few minutes that despite still being drunk—she didn’t like to use that word because it made her sound like she was more than just tipsy, even though she was—she was not, in fact, tired.</p><p>Was alcohol supposed to make you tired? Maybe not. Why else would people drink excessive amounts at lively house parties? Those didn’t seem like tired people. Then again, that didn’t seem to be the main selling point of social lubricant.</p><p>Approximately half an hour had passed before she finally shoved back the musty covers and got to her feet, hoping that a drink of water would help her mind settle. She should probably have drunk some water anyway, it would lessen the chance of a hangover. If she was going to get yelled at by Calla tomorrow morning, she’d rather not do it with a headache.</p><p>Mercifully, the door to Noah’s room didn’t protest, and she padded out into the main room on silent feet. Seventeen years of living at 300 Fox Way, with its multitudes of women and its even greater multitudes of creaky floorboards and squeaky doors had ensure she grew up surefooted and soundless as a cat.</p><p>“Can’t sleep?”</p><p>Blue turned, rather more sharply than she should have, to see Gansey. Of course he was there, this was technically his bedroom. But he wasn’t in his bed, instead sat on the floor by the edge of the model of Henrietta, a pair of scissors and some cardboard before his crossed legs. He had evidently taken his contacts out because he was wearing his wire-frames.</p><p>Blue shook her head. “I can’t remember the last time I slept somewhere that wasn’t my room,” she said. That was probably part of the truth.</p><p>Gansey wanted to ask if there even <em>was</em> a last time, since 300 Fox Way didn’t seem like the kind of household to go on holidays, but decided not to ask in case he made Blue angry. Instead, he smiled ruefully and said, “I’d offer to take you for a drive in the Pig, but…” He trailed off, and the memory of the last time he’d done that again burned in their minds.</p><p><em>And now, we never speak of it again</em>.</p><p>Gansey swallowed and gestured to the floorboards in front of him. It was rather less graceful than Blue had come to expect of him.</p><p>“You’re welcome to join me, if you want.” He was no stranger to sleepless nights, and knew that company was often preferable to solitude—provided it was the right company.</p><p>Blue eyed him for a moment, as if unsure of what precisely he meant by that, then sat down where he’d indicated. She glanced over at the couch where Adam was sleeping to make sure she hadn’t disturbed him, too, but he wasn’t there.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Gansey said, before she’d even opened her mouth to ask where Adam was. “I went to brush my teeth and when I came back…” He shrugged. Adam’s sneakers were still by the couch, though, which at least meant he hadn’t left the apartment. That also meant there was only one room he could be in, though neither Gansey nor Blue said it aloud.</p><p>For a few minutes, Blue just watched Gansey as he slowly cut and glued together another cardboard building to add to his model. Watched his hands carefully turn the cardboard into a rather impressive recreation of the awkwardly-shaped shoe-shop on the other side of town. It was hard not to look at him; this was her favourite Gansey, after all, with his wire-framed glasses and his mussed hair. He had large hands. For the longest time Blue had assumed that large hands meant clumsiness, roughness, a general carelessness or lack of finesse. She understood now that it wasn’t a question of the hands themselves but the person they belonged to. Even barbed, acidic Ronan could be gentle. She’d seen it with Chainsaw, with Matthew. And Gansey’s hands were light as air as they slowly constructed the shoe-shop.</p><p>Not for the first time, but for the first time when he was sat right in front of her, Blue wondered what those large, delicate hands might feel like on her skin. On some nights she could still feel the pressure of his fingers against her back, the ghost of his hand lifting hers almost to his mouth. It was strange to miss a thing you’d never really had; never really would.</p><p>‘Strange’ did not mean ‘less painful’.</p><p>As if he had somehow been able to read her thoughts, Gansey looked up from the shoe-shop. He opened his mouth to say something, hesitated, then asked, “Is this the first time you’ve been drunk?”</p><p>Blue could tell that this wasn’t the thing he’d originally intended to say, not even close. But she pretended like she hadn’t noticed and answered, “No. But it’s the first time I’ve been drunk with raven boys.” <em>With any kind of boys</em>.</p><p>A smile touched the corner of Gansey’s mouth. It wasn’t the smile he gave his parents and Declan. It wasn’t the smile he gave his teachers and Malory. It wasn’t even the smile he gave when he spoke about Glendower. This was a soft, faraway thing. A dream.</p><p>“We should have played more games,” he said. “Really shown you how it’s done.”</p><p>Blue was suddenly acutely aware that she was only half dressed, and that Gansey had never seen her in such little clothing before, with the possible exception of the day they’d found the ancient Camaro wheel in the lake. But even then, she’d been wearing leggings. And a bra. And Gansey himself was in a state of dress she hadn’t really believed was possible. Ganseys were meant to be seen in tailored suits and smart uniforms and, in the more adventurous cases, khakis and polo shirts. It was always a shock—but a good one—to see him in something as casually as a t-shirt. Paired with the faded tartan of his flannel pyjama pants, he was yet another step closer to the boy she’d seen on the Corpse Road. Another piece of the puzzle falling into place.</p><p>She pulled her legs up to her chest and hugged them, and in doing so she reminded Gansey of those same things. This action also reminded Gansey that, over the course of the summer, with their various trips to Cabeswater and excursions across man-made lakes and everything else, Blue’s light brown skin had tanned even browner, a shade warm enough that even Orla had to admit it was pretty—even if she’d tacked a criticism about Blue’s fashion sense onto the end of it. Of course he had no way of knowing the thing about Orla begrudgingly complimenting Blue, as Blue hasn’t told him and he tried not to make a habit of talking to Orla if he didn’t have to, but even though his eyesight was far from perfect, he was wearing his glasses right now and Blue’s skin was indeed a mesmerising colour.</p><p><em>Like tawny</em>, he thought. <em>Or cedar</em>. Blue liked trees, maybe she would appreciate the comparison. Or maybe the comparison would unintentionally contain something that was blatantly offensive to her but that he, white and male and wealthy, had had the privilege to never notice before.</p><p>He kept his mouth shut.</p><p>Blue had propped up her chin on her knees, watching Gansey’s hands as he continued working on the shoe-shop. “I liked it just fine,” she told him. “I don’t really get why some people go to parties all the time. I guess they’re fun once in a while but… I like when it’s just us.”</p><p><em>Us</em>. How was it that such a short word could be so heavy? It weighed on him; he felt so tired. Not tired like he should sleep, not tired like he even <em>wanted</em> to sleep. Tired of… waiting. Of always feeling like he was half in this world and half in another, be it Cabeswater, or sleep, or something else entirely.</p><p><em>Nom mortem, somni fratrem</em>, as Ronan might have said. He and Noah were two halves of the same coin. One boy not quite dead. One boy not quite alive. Neither where they ‘should’ be. <em>What </em>they should be.</p><p>Maybe, he thought, that was why he liked Blue so much. Why he could always sleep after talking with her. Blue energised Noah, but she calmed Gansey.</p><p>It felt illicit. It <em>was</em> illicit. And cruel and dangerous and a thousand other bad things but despite all of that, he couldn’t bring himself to stop. He had his phone by his side every night, hoping against hope that she would ‘try to call Congress’ again.</p><p>He stopped what he was doing at looked at her. He realised with a start that Blue had been staring at him—or rather, his hands. She looked him in the eye now, eyebrows raising slightly. <em>What is it?</em></p><p>In answer, he reached out and touched her neck, just like she had on that night they couldn’t speak about. Once again, Blue was so overwhelmingly aware of how she didn’t need to think about this, how it just <em>worked</em>. In a way it never had with Adam. In a way it never would with anyone other than Gansey.</p><p>He smelled like mint and apples. The cider, Blue remembered. She had gone very still.</p><p>“I’ve been wondering…” he murmured. “What are the… rules, I suppose?”</p><p>She peered at him, brown eyes wide and dark. “Rules?”</p><p>“Like, if you kiss you true love, he’ll die. Fine, that’s that. But can he kiss you? On the cheek, or…” His fingers ghosted along the side of her neck, and Blue was cast back to that night-time drive in the Camaro. Gansey was already there, but that wasn’t the only thought in his head. This all felt very dangerous and very tempting. This, Gansey thought, must be what Ronan felt whenever he’d seen the opportunity for a drag race. His question was as loud as if he’d yelled it. <em>Can</em> <strong><em>I</em></strong><em> kiss </em><em>you?</em></p><p>Neither of them were especially romantically experienced. Until Noah, Blue had never kissed anyone, so keenly aware of her future, and Gansey had been too swept up in Glendower and dying and helping Ronan and trying to help Adam that any idea of romance had been one in a long, <em>long</em> list of afterthoughts. The fact that Aglionby was an all-boys school had probably contributed to that. His classmates had spent their off days flirting with Mountain View girls, he'd spent his in a helicopter with his sister. </p><p>“I… don’t know,” Blue admitted. “I didn’t really ask.” At first, because it hadn’t seemed very important. She hadn’t wanted to kiss anyone, on the lips or otherwise. Now, all the psychics she knew were her family, and the idea of asking any of the women in 300 Fox Way about the precise logistics of her future was both mortifying and liable to make them start monitoring her comings and goings more closely.</p><p>For a moment, she considered asking Persephone. Persephone didn’t tell anyone much of anything even when it <em>wasn’t</em> something Blue would prefer to keep private. But she pushed that aside because asking Persephone would require her to go back to 300 Fox Way and that would require Gansey to take his hand away, and she didn’t want that.</p><p>“Helen watched this one television show,” he said mildly, as if the way he was touching her neck right now was the most ordinary thing in the world. “I forget what it was called, but it was about a guy who could raise the dead by touching them.”</p><p>Blue thought, <em>we could use a guy like that</em>.</p><p>“But if he touched them again,” Gansey continued, “They died for good. I think he saved his… his girlfriend? Wife? I don’t know. He brought her back’s the point. But he couldn’t touch her, couldn’t kiss her. Not without losing her forever.”</p><p>In that moment, Blue wanted so badly to tell Gansey the truth. The whole truth. About why she, a non-seer, had been able to see his spirit on the Corpse Road on St Mark’s Eve. About why his spirit had even <em>been</em> on the Corpse Road on St Mark’s Eve. Instead she said, “That sounds hard.”</p><p>Gansey nodded. “I could do it,” he said. “If it meant I saved the person I loved. If it meant I could still talk to them.”</p><p>Blue looked up at him. “It would mean you couldn’t touch their neck like you’re touching mine now,” she said.</p><p>Neither of them said what they were thinking. <em>If it meant I saved </em>you<em>. If it meant I could still talk to </em>you<em>. It would mean you couldn’t touch </em>my<em> neck like you’re touching mine right now.</em></p><p>Again that question, louder than if Gansey had shouted it, hung in the air between them. But he still didn’t ask it. Not because he already knew the answer, but because he didn’t want to make Blue feel uncomfortable. The <em>last</em> thing he wanted was to make Blue feel uncomfortable, like he expected something from her, like he was asking of her something he knew she couldn’t give. There was a part of him that would be content to just stay like this forever, his fingers curled around her neck, foreheads touching, just being in this space with her. There was another part that ached for how it wasn’t enough.</p><p><em>I wish you could be kissed, Jane</em>. His own voice echoed in his head. <em>Because I would beg just one off you. </em></p><p>Blue remembered that night too, but not that precise moment. “Gansey?” she asked, her voice as soft as a kiss she couldn’t give.</p><p>“Yes, Jane?”</p><p>“When we…” she started. “After Adam and I fought…” Why, she thought, was it easier to say that instead of something like <em>where we made our secret </em>or<em> when you almost kissed me</em> or even <em>when we went on that drive</em>?</p><p>Gansey looked at her. His expression was strange. Pained. “We can’t,” he said. <em>We can’t speak of it. We swore we wouldn’t</em>. And yet, he wanted nothing more.</p><p>Actually, no. There was one thing he wanted more.</p><p>“I just wanted to know,” she said, “You said ‘in that light I’, and then you stopped talking.” She wasn’t sure why she was so focussed on that precise moment. Not the feel of his neck against her hand, the line of his jaw just a breath away from her lips, his fingers on her spine. Maybe because she’d tried to think up any number of endings to that sentence and none of them had sounded even close to right. Maybe because words were the one thing she <em>could</em> have. At least for now. “What were you going to say?”</p><p>Gansey’s laugh was soft and breathy, like he’d just received an incredible, heartfelt surprise. “I was going to say that… in that light, you were breaking my heart.”</p><p>She looked up at him. It wasn’t an especially sharp or fast movement, but it was sharp and fast compared to the quiet stillness that had enveloped them. “What?”</p><p>“You, sitting in the Pig,” he said, “Looking at me—the real me, not the Aglionby me—like… like <em>that</em>. And I couldn’t kiss you.” His expression was sombre. “Because of your… future, because of Adam. You broke my heart.”</p><p>“Better your heart than your life,” she murmured. She didn’t even realise she was saying the words until they were said. She wasn’t sure what had possessed her to say them.</p><p>Gansey peered down at her, concerned. “What do you mean?”</p><p>Blue swallowed. She was halfway there. He already knew most of the truth. And her vision in the dreaming tree… he was going to find out eventually. Another term for alcohol came to mind, then. <em>Liquid courage</em>.</p><p>“I told you I’m not psychic,” she said. “I’m not a seer. Not like Calla, or Persephone, or Orla, or… or my mom. I just make things stronger for them.”</p><p>Gansey nodded. So far, this was all information of which he was already well aware. She could see in his eyes, warm and unjudgmental, and it was like a shard of ice in her heart. But he needed to know. And now was as good a time as any. Waiting wouldn’t make it easier. If anything, it had made it harder.</p><p>“But,” she went on, “I saw your spirit on St Mark’s Eve.”</p><p>He nodded again. “You told me in the helicopter,” he said, and a smile touched his eyes, then his mouth. “The day we found Cabeswater.” It had only been a few months ago, but it felt like a lifetime. Blue could scarcely remember a time before she had befriended these Raven Boys, before they had discovered Cabeswater.</p><p>She swallowed. “Gansey,” she said, “Spirits don’t just… <em>appear</em> on the C—on the ley line. At least, not on St Mark’s Eve they don’t. The spirits that appear on St Mark’s Eve aren’t the dead. They’re the… the… dead-to-be.”</p><p>Gansey looked at her. It struck Blue in that moment that she really had no idea how she’d expected him to react. To push her away? To call her a liar? Neither of those things sounded like something Gansey would do. She might’ve thought that of President Cell Phone from Nino’s, but not <em>Gansey</em>. Not the scholar in his wire-framed glasses and white t-shirt.</p><p>“The… dead-to-be,” he echoed slowly. Blue nodded.</p><p>“A non-psychic—” Her voice shook. “—would only see a spirit on St Mark’s Eve for two reasons. Either they… they killed whoever’s spirit they see, or…” Her throat was so tight. She couldn’t get the words out, she couldn’t.</p><p>“…or the spirit is their true love,” Gansey finished, pulling the threads together. “Oh, Jane,” he said, and she half-expected him to push her away. His hand fell from her neck, and she felt abruptly cold in all the places he’d been touching. What she did <em>not </em>expect was for him to take her hand in his own and say, “I’m so sorry.”</p><p>She stared at him. “<em>You’re</em> sorry? I just told you you’re gonna <em>die</em>, Gansey!” Unbelievably, Gansey smiled at her. “Did you get hit on the head when I wasn’t looking?” she asked, not meaning for it to sound cross, but it did.</p><p>Maybe Blue’s confession that he was to die within the year should have scared Gansey more than it did; maybe the knowledge that he was going to die, again, should have scared Gansey more than it did. But he’d been researching ley lines since he was ten years old, he’d read about St Mark’s Eve and the vigil that could be conducted on a ley. Since the moment he’d heard his own name on that tape, before he’d even met Blue… some part of him had known. And it was numb, mild confirmation rather than shock that settled into his bones. He was going to die, but he’d done it before. And when he had, he’d heard that voice, telling him he would live because of Glendower. All he could really think about that was how it all but promised that this would be it; this would be the year he would finally find Glendower. He had lived for Glendower, now it seemed he would die for Glendower. He couldn’t even really be scared, focussed instead on how tidily circular it was.</p><p>His smile was sad when he replied, “Not that I remember.” Sad, now amused. Which meant, Blue realised, that he believed her. That was almost worse. “That’s a terrible burden to have to bear, Jane. Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”</p><p>Blue flushed. She was angry, but she wasn’t precisely sure who or what she was angry at. Maura. Gansey. Herself. The future. “You’re asking me why I didn’t tell you that I was supposed to kill you? That you’re supposed to be my—my—” Again, she found herself unable to say the words. Saying them made it all so <em>real</em>.</p><p>“That’s fair,” Gansey admitted. He threaded their fingers together. “You know… I think I… I already knew. Not precisely, but…” How to explain that her confession hadn’t come as a surprise without sounding morbid? Blue let out a soft sigh. He told himself it was a relieved sigh. It probably was. She, too, sounded tired.</p><p>“Do you… want to talk about it?” he asked.</p><p>She looked at their intertwined hands. “No. Yes. I don’t know,” she muttered. “I want—I just want to pretend like things can be… <em>simple</em> for once.”</p><p>Gansey hummed. <em>That</em> he understood only too well. He loved searching for Glendower, it was his purpose, the reason he was alive, but he didn’t like how messy it was, sometimes. Maybe that was juvenile; naïve, but it was the truth. Grand adventures only existed in storybooks and fairytales.</p><p>“Me, too,” he finally said. He leant down and for one awful moment Blue thought he was going to kiss their joined hands, but he just rested his forehead against her knuckles, and somehow that felt more personal than his lips.</p><p>For a moment, she saw him, and yet did not see him, like how she sometimes looked at Noah when he was just arriving or just fading. She saw Gansey, with his wire-frame glasses and tousled hair, and she saw a king, knelt before his queen, war and duty pulling him from her side.</p><p>She elected to blame it on the remnants of the alcohol.</p><p>Gansey sighed, bringing her out of her thoughts when she felt his breath on her fingers. “Jane…” he said slowly. “Can I… ask something of you?”</p><p>Carefully, she nodded.</p><p>He raised his head from their joined hands. “Stay,” he said simply. “With me, I mean. Tonight.”</p><p>Her eyes widened. “Gansey—”</p><p>“Only if you want to,” he said quickly. “I would never, God, Jane, I would <em>never</em>—I just meant… It would be simple. I mean—it wouldn’t be complicated. I wouldn’t be expecting anything of you. And I’d like it, if you did, and…”</p><p>He gave a meaningful glance over to the couch, where Adam was conspicuously absent, and Blue understood fully what that empty couch meant. There was, after all, only one room Adam could be in, if Gansey had been in the kitchen-bathroom-laundry when he’d vanished.</p><p>It wouldn’t change St Mark’s Eve, it wouldn’t change her future, but it could change her present.</p><p>She didn’t realise she’d made up her mind until she heard her own voice whisper, “Okay.”</p><p>Gansey’s smile made her heart ache. He ran his thumb over her knuckles and beamed at her. “Okay,” he replied.</p><p>He tidied away his scissors and left the shoe-shop on top of a box where it wouldn’t accidentally be stepped on. Blue watched him, wondering if he always fussed this much—probably not, as Monmouth Manufacturing was home to three teenaged boys and the only reason they weren’t <em>all</em> messy is because one of them was dead and the other two more than made up for it—or if he was just trying to make her feel more comfortable by allowing her plenty of time to get into his bed and settle before he joined her. He carefully took off his glasses, set them on the nightstand, and lay down beside her.</p><p>They lay there, facing each other, like children in a fairytale. There was almost enough space between them for another person. No chance of accidental brushing of lips.</p><p>Gansey reached out and took her hand again, her left in his right, so much larger than her own. Him so much larger than her. She remembered being irritated by that, irritated by yet another boy looking down his nose at her because she was small and he was not. Now she felt… comforted.</p><p>He gazed at her, illuminated in stark, perfect detail by the window behind him. She was close enough that he didn’t need his glasses to be able to see her clearly, and there was a strange intimacy in that, even more than when he wore his glasses around her. No one at Aglionby even knew he wore glasses, aside from Ronan and Adam.</p><p>In the moonlight, he realised Blue’s eyes were not uniformly brown, but flecked with gold. How had he never noticed that before?</p><p><em>Because all your stolen moments were in the dark</em>, his mind answered. When he’d spoken to her on the phone at night, when they’d driven around in the Pig. Under cover of darkness, the lights of the Camaro and Monmouth turned off and silent.</p><p>But now, they had no reason to hide in the darkness. These moments didn’t have to be stolen. If he was going to die, he was going to catch as many as he could, like snowflakes on his tongue in a winter he would probably not live to see.</p><p>Blue looked at Gansey as he looked at her. Facing away from the window, he was silhouetted by the moonlight rather than lit, outlined in silver, features half-obscured by the shadow, handsome and peaceful as a sleeping king. She hoped they found Glendower before he died. She couldn’t bear it if he died before then. Well, she probably wouldn’t be able to bear it anyway, but it would be worse if Gansey died before he found his king.</p><p>She wasn’t sure what compelled her to ask, but she did. “Gansey?” she said, and his eyes focussed as he looked at her. “Would you kiss me, if you could?”</p><p>Gansey smiled at her, and it was such a soft, sad thing that it physically pained her to see it. She wanted so badly to take his face in her hands and kiss that sad smile away. He let go of her hand to touch her cheek. She imagined it was his lips.</p><p>“Oh, Jane,” he said, in the same heavy tone as earlier, the tone that meant <em>in this light, you break my heart</em>. “There are times when I think it would be worth death to kiss you.” Unbearably, his smile became even sadder; rueful. “A lot of times, actually.” He stroked her cheek, impossibly lightly. “There are worse ways to go,” he mused.</p><p>Blue cast her mind back to several weeks before; sitting on Gansey’s bed, making out with Noah. It had been nice, kissing him. Kissing. It had hurt to know she would never have it again. It still hurt. Right now, it hurt so much she couldn’t breathe. It was a pain that swelled up inside her until it became a hole into which she was falling, falling, with nothing to hold on to and nothing to catch her. She wanted to cry.</p><p>Tears burned her eyes, and she forced them back because she would not cry, she would <em>not</em> mourn Gansey when he was right in front of her. “It’s not fair,” she muttered.</p><p>Gansey heaved a sigh, the sort of sigh that she’d learned always preceded his ‘gallant’ voice, the one he put up when he was hurting but he didn’t want anyone to know because he thought he wasn’t allowed to hurt. “I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, Jane,” he told her, gallantly.</p><p>He seemed to realise what he’d said a moment after he’d said it. Before he could open his mouth to say something awful or wonderful Blue replied, “I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, either.” A small laugh escaped her. “I really tried not to. For Adam’s sake. For yours. For mine.”</p><p>Gansey chuckled. It was a different sound to his laugh, no less warm, but softer, more personal. “I don’t mind that you failed,” he said. “Truly.”</p><p>There was something in his eyes that terrified and thrilled her in equal measure. Somehow it looked both like a fierce <em>want</em>, but also utter willingness. A glint, sharp as a raven’s beak, dark as its wing. Oh, how she’d fallen in love with her Raven Boys. One who was more raven than boy, one who was more king than raven, one who was not quite a boy, and one who was something else entirely. How had she gotten so tangled up in all of them, and they in her?</p><p>She realised then that it wasn’t a question of trying not to fall in love with Richard Gansey. It was, had been, would still be, a question of <em>when</em>. Time was circular, and it was this, the <em>inevitability</em> of him, that was almost enough to stop the pain in her heart, and that made it so much worse.</p><p>She shuffled forwards, shrinking the space between them. She raised her left hand to his cheek, and his head turned, leaning into the touch, lips a mere breath away from the heel of her palm. Even as he did this, she saw his brows twitch, his softly awed expression flicker, his murmur of “Blue…”, and how the warning was infinitely more pressing for how he used her real name. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d used her real name.</p><p>For a moment, her breath caught, transfixed by the look in his eyes. “I know,” she breathed, and Gansey felt the words as much as he heard them. “I just… want to pretend. That I could.”</p><p>He exhaled, breath shaking. “Okay.”</p><p>What was a kiss, they both wondered, when it wasn’t a kiss? A sweep of her thumb over his bottom lip, the tangle of his fingers in her hair, the press of warm bodies, ghosting mouths over skin, throats and collarbones and cheeks, shivering at the warmth of breath, at the sweet torture of <em>almost, but not quite</em>. It was as beautiful and dangerous as a cliff.</p><p>They were addictively close, he thought. He could feel her breathing on his lips, he could smell her hair. She smelled, like she always did, of trees. A heady, verdant scent. Not quite Cabeswater, but not entirely different, either. He wanted so badly to kiss her. To pull her that last inch, that last centimetre, to know what it felt like, just once. He’d meant what he’d said. It would be worth death. Just to know.</p><p>The pain was sudden and overwhelming. “God…” he muttered. The feel of her in his arms, hands pressed against her spine like the last time they’d dared to do anything like this. She had one of her hands on the back of his neck, the other resting over his heart. Could she feel how hard it was pounding?</p><p>“I want you so much, Jane,” he said, his voice raw.</p><p>Blue looked at him, lips parted, and he quickly added, “Not that I—not like <em>that</em>—well, a little like that, obviously, but I mean—I want—<em>this</em>. You.” His arms tightened around her, hands demonstrating what his words could not.</p><p>She swallowed. “I want that, too,” she said. His heartbeat was a mirror of her own pulse, strong and frantic. It seemed impossible that something as gentle as a kiss could stop such a force as Richard Campbell Gansey III, as his heart. “You.”</p><p>“You have me, Jane,” he swore. “I don’t—<em>know</em>—for how long. The rest of my life, however long that is. I’m yours.” It hurt to speak those words. It hurt more to keep silent.</p><p>Tears burned at her eyes again. This was all too much, and yet not enough. “Gansey—” she began, then broke off. She didn’t know what she’d meant to say. “Don’t,” she finally managed, “Talk like that.”</p><p>He nodded. “Right. No, you’re right, I—Jesus.” He closed his eyes and ducked his head so their foreheads were pressed together, grounding himself. “I just meant… say the word, Jane. And you’ll have me. However you want me.”</p><p>“Really?” she asked, not because she doubted it, but because she wanted to hear it again. Because if she was doomed to lose him, doomed to never be able to kiss him, she was going to take what she could get.</p><p>He smiled. It was a sad smile, but so warm it almost didn’t matter. He looked at her, and his eyes were bright. He was unsure of so many things, but not her. “However you want me,” he repeated.</p><p>Blue smiled back, just the barest hint of mischief in her expression. Some echo of that terrifying, thrilling look that had been in his eyes before he’d not-kissed her. That fierce <em>want</em> was still there, mirrored in her own. “And how…” she said slowly, “Do <em>you</em> want <em>me?</em>”</p><p>“Oh,” he said, as if realising something. “More ways than I can count. I want you beside me when I’m driving the Pig, when I’m researching, when I’m lying here at night.” He chuckled again, warm and enticing. “More ways than is proper for a young man to think of a young lady like yourself.”</p><p>She snorted. “I’m not a lady,” she said, but her eyes were still wide, intrigued. “Please. Tell me.” Because, after all, words were the only thing she could have with him.</p><p>Gansey, breath shaky, stroked one hand down the side of her face, brushing one errant lock of black hair behind her ear. It was short and didn’t obey him; much like her. “If I could,” he murmured, “I’d kiss you, Jane. Every inch of you.” He felt her breath hitch as he spoke, her fingers just brushing the hair on his neck. “I’d learn what your skin tastes like. How your pulse would feel against my lips.” He ducked his head and held his mouth just over the join of her neck and collar. He could see the slight twitch of a muscle in her neck, anticipating a touch that would not, <em>could</em> not come.</p><p>“If you let me, I’d run my hands up your stomach,” he told her. The hand that wasn’t pinned down by her body slid from her spine to rest lightly but purposefully on her hip. Was he imagining it, or did she rock her hips slightly closer to him as he did? “I’d know what it felt like to feel your bare skin against mine.” He was still speaking into her shoulder, and he pulled her closer, raising his head so his lips were by her ear. He could feel the huff of her breathing against his collarbone. Her hand clutched at his shoulder, anchoring herself. “I’d—take my shirt off. Yours, if you wanted me to. I’d trace every line of you with—with my tongue.”</p><p>He’d never really done this before, and sometimes he was terrible with words and sometimes he was perfect with them. From Blue’s reaction, this was one of the latter times.</p><p>“If you let me,” he said again, “I’d lean over you. Feel you underneath me. Feel your legs around my hips.” He turned his head, letting his breath trail away from her ear, down her neck, over her shoulder like mist. “I’d put my—hand. Over your panties. Or under them, if you asked. I’d figure out how to make you make soft little sounds. Whisper my name. I’d figure out how to make you beg for me to put my lips there instead. I’d only be too happy to do it.” His mouth was hovering over her shoulder, and he leant up so he was looking her in the eyes. They were wide and dark, entranced by him. She seemed to be holding her breath. His fingers dug into her hip, gripping tighter. Just thinking about it, speaking of it… he was again reminded of a cliff. Of a drag race.</p><p>“I’d roll us over so I could feel your weight on top of me,” he continued. He pulled back slightly as he did, as if he meant to actually do it. “See how you look with the moonlight shining off your bare skin. God… I bet you’d look beautiful, Jane. You always do. I’d let you do anything you wanted to me, anything at all. I’d—” He cut himself off with a small, choked gasp as, seemingly involuntarily, they pressed against one another again. If she hadn’t already known how serious he was, how much he wanted her, she knew now. He could see it in her eyes.</p><p>It took him a long time to untangle himself from her gaze. It took even longer than it would have because he didn’t want to untangle himself. Taking a long, shaky breath, he pressed his forehead to hers again.</p><p>“If you let me,” he repeated again, finally. Promise burned in his eyes. Blue was falling, again. Not in that hole, but in the dark pool of his eyes.</p><p>She swallowed. “I… I’d let you.”</p><p>His breath caught.</p><p>“This is me,” she whispered, “Letting you… letting you.”</p><p>“Jane…” he exclaimed softly. He said it like a prayer.</p><p>“Just—don’t kiss my face,” she told him. The last remnants of the alcohol burned inside her, burned up by the heat on her face, on her hip where Gansey’s hand was pressed, between her legs. Liquid courage. “Not my face.”</p><p>He nodded; he’d expected as much. “I won’t,” he swore. He would have to make do with everywhere else instead. But that was far more than he’d ever dared dream already. He would gladly take it. One of those snowflake moments to catch and hold on his tongue.</p><p>Agonisingly slowly, as if this was a dream and moving too slowly would stir them to waking, Gansey leant down and pressed his lips to the spot just below Blue’s ear. He felt her breath hitch, her grip tighten on his shoulder. Fear? Anticipation? Relief? He didn’t much care; she was holding him, that was all he cared about.</p><p>“Jane…” he whispered into her skin. “Are you…?”</p><p>“Yes,” she breathed, and he felt her pulse thrumming under his lips. “Please.”</p><p>He moved lower, trailing a line of feather light kisses down the column of her neck until he reached the hollow of his throat. His touch was gentle, the brush of a moth’s wing, as if he worried <em>she</em> was the one that might break. Her hand slid up from his neck into his hair. The touch was unfamiliar to him, but he liked it, found his own hands moving from her back to run slowly over her hips, gliding over the sheer material of her dress. In full light, it was surely almost see-through.</p><p>There was a spot just on the left side of her neck, the base of her throat, that when his mouth touched it, her breath hitched, and her fingers tightened in his hair. She felt him smile against her skin, and kiss there again, slightly harder, and her breath hitched again. Daring, he sealed his mouth over that spot, and Blue bit her lip to stop the strange noise in the back of her throat from making it to her lips. Her other hand had moved from his shoulder to his upper arm, and she’d been right earlier; her hand was far too small to encircle it.</p><p>She didn’t remember making the decision to press up against him, shoulder to hips, but she must have, because she was. One of his hands was braced on her neck, holding her against him, tipping her head back slightly as he laved ever more daring kisses along her throat, the other still on her hip, and this was nothing at all like the last time a boy had kissed her in this bed. Noah had been sweet and heart-breaking and curious, but there was none of this—this—<em>passion</em>. The heat of the living; his hands on her skin, the pulse in his wrist pressed against her collarbone, the press of him against her leg. When he finally pulled away to look at her, eyes wide as if he’d shocked himself with those kisses, pupils so large they appeared all-black, she found herself for a moment unable to form words.</p><p>His hand moved from where it cradled her head to brush over the small, purplish mark on her throat. The idea of his marking her appealed to her more than she would have expected. It was, like his earlier smile, like this strange feeling rising up in her, dark and intriguing and—if she let herself give in to the pull—dangerously addictive.</p><p>That receiving a kiss would only make her want another was a strange concept, but it was the truth, and when Gansey leaned away from her she pulled him back, hugging him to her, and he took her cue and rolled them over so he was leaning over her, legs tangling together. He kissed her collar again, and the soft groan that came from him when he did sent a bolt of electricity through her.</p><p>“Jane,” he said again, and there was something deliciously hoarse about his voice, so far removed from the polished Richard Gansey seen by his parents, by his classmates. This was the voice of the scholar in his glasses and t-shirt, driving around Henrietta in the dead of night with secrets on his lips and death on hers. “Can I…” He trailed off, unsure exactly of what he wanted besides her, her, her.</p><p>Blue took advantage of how he was propped above her to slip her hands under the hem of his t-shirt and over his stomach. She hadn’t let herself think what being captain of the rowing team had really meant, but she did now. He was lean and muscular in that way teenaged boys were, and as she ran her hands over his flanks, over the skin of his back, he leant up, grabbed his shirt by the back of the collar and swept it off in one clean motion.</p><p>In the moonlight, kneeling over her, eyes somehow dark and bright at the same time, he looked like a young god. Powerful, beautiful, immortal. The way he gazed down at her… she, too, felt powerful, beautiful, immortal. She reached out and pressed her hand to his abdomen, just next to his navel, just to confirm to herself that he was real, here, alive.</p><p>Leaning back down, the removal of this single item of clothing felt enticingly daring, and emboldened, he placed one hand on the bare skin of her thigh, just below her dress. His eyes were earnest, politely questioning, and instead of answering with words she reached down and slowly dragged his hand up, over her hip, her waist, to her ribcage. Everywhere his hand touched her bare skin was electric. His thumb brushed the underside of her breast and her breath caught for a moment, eyes widening, and then she nodded.</p><p>Whenever she’d been told about these sorts of experiences—usually by Orla, who seemed to have been gifted with an abundance of psychic awareness in return for a complete lack of social awareness and would blithely recount her sexual experiences to anyone within earshot—Blue had not been able to help thinking that they sounded so… objectifying. An object to be touched and grabbed and <em>used</em>. But the way Gansey met her gaze, seeming to delight more in her <em>re</em>action than his action, she allowed herself to re-evaluate her prior thoughts.</p><p>Her skin was soft and sensitive, and he watched her face, hungry for those twitches in her expression, the tiny gasps, the way she would bite at her bottom lip, and he ached to bite it for her, but he settled for watching, for ducking his head and pressing his mouth to her stomach. The muscles in her abdomen twitched under his touch as if startled, but she carded her fingers through his hair and he took it as a sign to continue as he slowly laid another trail of kisses over her stomach, her ribs, pushing her dress up as he went, until it bunched around her shoulders and she shimmied out of it, throwing it in roughly the same direction Gansey had thrown his t-shirt.</p><p>He gazed down at her, hair mussed, mouth agape. “Not to sound like a cliché, but my god,” he murmured. “You’re beautiful.”</p><p>The Blue who had met President Cell Phone in Nino’s all those months ago would have appalled at the idea of <em>blushing</em> because of something a raven boy told her, but she couldn’t bring herself to care in that moment. “You’re quite pretty yourself,” she replied, reaching up to cup his cheek again. She could feel the barest hints of stubble under her palm. This time, he turned fully, lips brushing the heel of her hand. Catching it in his own, he held it against his face, kissed her wrist, her forearm, the inside of her elbow, working his way to her neck again. Then her collar, her breastbone, sealing over—</p><p>“<em>Oh</em>,” she exclaimed, as much surprised by the sensation as the noise she made, and Gansey couldn’t choke off the small groan he made because <em>god</em>, that was a sound he wanted to hear again. He might’ve wondered he’d done something wrong if not for how her hand went to his head, stroked through his hair in an oddly tender gesture. One of his hands snuck between her and the mattress, holding her against him, the other braced on her bare hip, thumb running along the elastic waistband of her underwear.</p><p>Peppering kisses over her chest as he moved from one side of the other, he said, “You have no idea—how often—I’ve dreamt of—doing this—with you.” His tone was almost sheepish, almost self-deprecating. He’d known it wasn’t fair for him to dream of her like this, of the girl who was so vehemently insistent of her rights and everyone else’s, of the girl who’d fallen for Adam, of the girl Adam had fallen for, but unlike Ronan, he couldn’t control his dreams.</p><p>“I’d be lying if… if I hadn’t thought the same,” Blue admitted breathlessly. “<em>Oh</em>—!” She muffled whatever noise she’d been making with the hand that wasn’t in Gansey’s hair, so very mindful that there was only a door separating them from Ronan and Adam. Even though she was pretty sure neither of them were in the mood to come out of that room and investigate any strange noises they heard, she didn’t want to chance it.</p><p>He took his time because he could, because he didn’t know if there would ever be another chance. Every inch of skin he could see, he kissed it, sucking dark marks into her collar, her breasts, over her stomach, until she was panting underneath him, chest heaving, and it was the most incredible thing he’d ever seen. Better than Cabeswater, better than the vision from the Dreaming Tree. This—<em>Blue</em>—wasn’t a dream, wasn’t something made from dreams; she was real.</p><p>“Gansey…” she muttered, and she pulled his face level with hers, and for a moment he thought, dreaded, hoped, that she might kiss him. But she didn’t, only saying. “I… I like the feel of you. Over me. Around me.” Not unlike the Dreaming Tree. Safe and new and exhilarating. She’d never met a person she liked as much as she liked trees before.</p><p>His laugh was soft. “I like it, too, Jane,” he whispered back. Her bare skin against his, warm and soft and alive. Nuzzling her shoulder, he just lay there for several long moments, not quite putting all his weight on her, just enjoying the feeling of her, in his bed, with him, wearing only her underwear. “I like you a lot, Blue Sargent,” he murmured into her skin.</p><p>“I like you a lot, too, Dick Gansey,” she replied, her arms around his shoulders. When he pulled back to grin at her, she moved her hand to rest a single finger on his cheek, on the dimple that had appeared. The Blue that had met President Cell Phone thought <em>of course he has dimples</em>. The Blue that had gone for a night-time drive in the Pig thought, <em>that’s a really nice smile</em>.</p><p>Slowly, questioningly, Gansey shifted so he bore all his weight on one arm, the other brushing slowly over her stomach, tracing aimless patterns between the purplish marks he’d left, over her ribs, her navel, along the waistband of her underwear. Something in Blue’s eyes darkened as she realised his intention, and when he raised his eyebrows, a hint of a dark smile crossed her lips. Amusement and anticipation and excitement were tucked in the crooked corner of that smile, and she nodded.</p><p>The first brush of his fingers over the damp cotton was tentative, experimental. Blue sucked in a small breath not because of any overwhelming sensation, just the knowledge that she was there, and so was Gansey, and neither of them were wearing a shirt, and his hand was between her legs, and she didn’t mind—quite the opposite, really.</p><p>He tried again, a little less hesitant. Blue managed. “It—uh—it feels better if, if you—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words, too embarrassed. Gansey laughed, similarly bashful, but took her meaning. Soft skin and coarse hair and—</p><p>“Oh…” he said mildly. “You’re… wet.”</p><p>She shot him an irritated look. “Aglionby didn’t cover that in biology?” she asked dryly. “Maybe no one at the all-boys school heard how women work.”</p><p>“I’ve heard about it,” Gansey said indignantly, almost defensively, and Blue had to laugh. “I just didn’t realise it was so… <em>literal</em>.”</p><p><em>Good lord</em>, she thought, putting a hand to her face. Shirtless in bed with Richard Gansey’s hand in her panties and they were arguing about Aglionby’s biology curriculum.</p><p>With the arm that wasn’t in her pants, Gansey reached up and pulled her hand away, pressing it to his lips. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said—no, <em>purred</em> against her fingers. “It’s weird, but… sexy. Is it because of me?”</p><p>The combination of daring and shyness in his expression was indecently distracting, Blue thought. She was caught between rolling her eyes and shooting back a sarcastic comment like <em>Ronan, actually</em>, but somewhere in making the decision it was snatched away from her by whatever part of her chose to flush and purr back, “Maybe.”</p><p>He smirked. Blue had never realised just how attractive Gansey could look when he smirked. She opened her mouth to say something, but cut herself off with a squeak because he’d moved his hand and she hadn’t been expecting it and it was so strange to feel someone’s fingers besides her own there.</p><p>Gansey cocked his head, like she was a riddle he was trying to unwind. “Are you okay?” he asked, and she nodded. “Good. Cause I… I don’t really know how to…” He glanced down meaningfully.</p><p>“Just don’t… press… too hard,” she said haltingly, unsure of how to really voice what to do. She’d never had to explain any of this before!</p><p>He moved carefully, touch light, watching her keenly. When he got a reaction, she was met with the distinct impression of being studied. She might have been embarrassed or offended if not for how open his expression was. Like when he spoke about Glendower, or Henrietta, or the Camaro. She was something he loved, something he wanted to do justice to.</p><p>He was a quick study, too, and within a few minutes she was clutching his shoulder again, muffling cries between gasping breaths, wishing so badly she could pull his lips to hers, have him swallow those noises. She settled for his lips on her throat again, settled for whispering, “Gansey…” with her lips perilously close to his ear. His breath shuddered. He might be content never being able to kiss her if it still meant he could hear her say his name like that. All he could think about was how soft she was, the noises she was making, how the flannel of his pyjama pants, the cotton of her panties, it wasn’t much fabric at all.</p><p>“Gansey…” she said again, breathing harder. “I… I…” She cut herself off with a muffled noise that might’ve been a moan, her grip on his shoulder tightened. He pulled back from her throat, watched her… watched her… <em>fall apart</em>.</p><p>With a soft cry, every muscle in her body tensed, and for a second she was frozen, a statue caught in pleasure, and then she went limp, sinking bonelessly into the mattress, looping her arms around his neck and pulling him down on top of her. He went willingly, rolling them over slightly so she was curled into his left side, and she hummed, head pillowed on his shoulder.</p><p>“I liked that,” she told him. “More than I thought I would.”</p><p>He raised an eyebrow and craned his neck to look down at her. “And what is <em>that</em> supposed to mean?” he asked, but his tone was warm with amusement.</p><p>She shrugged. “Before I met you guys, I figured that raven boys were always more interested in getting themselves off than anyone else.”</p><p>“Well, I hope I’ve done something to alter those expectations,” he replied.</p><p>“Something,” she echoed, but he took it as an agreement.</p><p>Raising his free hand to push his hair back from his face, he realised it was sticky. “Hm.”</p><p>Blue lifted her head to look at him. “What—? Oh.” She realised the problem. “You don’t keep tissues in your nightstand or something?” she asked, and he flushed.</p><p>“I try not to… do that sort of thing. In here,” he said awkwardly. “In case Ronan comes out his room to get something. I normally…” He jerked his head towards the kitchen-bathroom-laundry. The lock on the door was feeble and rarely used, but Ronan would notice if the door didn’t immediately open and would take the hint. At least, Gansey <em>assumed</em> he would because as of yet the need for him to ‘take the hint’ had never arisen.</p><p>“I hope you don’t expect me to go get you some,” she said, pulling the blanket of the bed around her still-bare torso.</p><p>Gansey raised an eyebrow. “I think I should be offended that you still think so low of me,” he said wryly, then, in lieu of a better idea licked his hand clean. Blue stared at him. He looked back at her. “What?”</p><p>“I… don’t know,” she replied. That was a lie. She didn’t intend to get an image of him between her legs, touching her with his mouth instead of his fingers, but it came to mind anyway.</p><p>Again, there was that sense of danger. For the past several months, she’d found that she would be content to stay friends with the boys forever, to stay best friends with Gansey forever, and maybe one day to also know him as intimately as people could know one another.</p><p>Gansey seemed to know roughly what was going through her head, if not exactly, and smiled that dark, dangerous smile again. He shifted so he was propped over her again. “Do you want me to…?”</p><p>“No,” she said quickly—too quickly, and he blinked at her, suddenly worried he’d overstepped until she added. “I mean—<em>yes</em>—but—not right now. I want to—to do something.” She did, because it was unfair that she couldn’t kiss him, so she was going to take what she could get, and she wanted to know the sounds he would make when she was touching him, if they were anything like the ones he’d made when touching her, or if they were somehow… <em>more</em>.</p><p>With intent, she put a hand on his hip, on the waistband of his flannel pyjama pants, tracing one finger along the edge. His breath hitched slightly; anticipation.</p><p>“Jane,” he said, putting a hand on her wrist. “You don’t have to—”</p><p>“I want to,” she told him. “I want…” <em>You</em>. “…to see you.” To see him like he had seen her.</p><p>For a moment, Gansey was dumbfounded. Then he smiled. “Oh, right, I forgot—feminists believe in equality in all things.”</p><p>She shot him a look. “I could just <em>not</em>,” she said, and he realised the joke had been in poor taste.</p><p>“Right. I’m sorry. That was rude of me.” He flushed. Blue smirked at him as she moved her hand lower, palming at the crotch of his pyjama pants, then slipped underneath the flannel entirely. Leaning over her as he was, she could feel the waves of his hair tickling her forehead, his breath on her cheek, felt it stutter as she wrapped her hand around him, exhale as he pressed his forehead to hers. “God…” he muttered.</p><p>“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she whispered back.</p><p>He had to guide her hand, and the awkward angle didn’t much help, but she, too, was a quick study when the study was of interest to her—and the choked gasps Gansey made, the half-muffled moans, the shuddering of his breath and arms as he stayed propped above her, the way his hips bucked seemingly involuntarily were all <em>extremely</em> interesting.</p><p>“Jesus, Jane…” he murmured, voice hoarse again, and it sent another bolt of electricity pooling between her legs, and she was momentarily consumed with the urge to rip off those last few items of clothing and to hell with the consequences. “I can’t—I’ve gotta—I want—” He couldn’t form sentences, couldn’t even think straight, he just wanted to—to—“Can I—touch you? Again?”</p><p>“Please,” she said, free arm curling around his shoulders, pulling his mouth to the crook of her neck. That spot was going to be bitten raw in the morning and she couldn’t bring herself to care in the slightest. There was less fumbling this time, because he knew what she liked and the electricity between them was potent as a drug, pushing her halfway to release already.</p><p>It was messy and awkward and so quintessentially teenaged, hands all over one another as they explored and mapped and commit to memory each line and muscle and mark. Gansey made good on his promise to kiss every inch of her as best he could, muttering curses and prayers into her skin as she spoke hers to the air, breathless and dizzied until finally, with a long, low groan, he went stiff above her, shuddered, then collapsed on top of her.</p><p>After a long moment, he regained the clarity of mind to mumble, “That was… rude of me…”</p><p>“Oh, you’re not that heavy,” she said. “My arm’s a little stuck, though.”</p><p>“Ah.” He lifted himself onto his arms and took in the mess he’d made of his flannel pyjama pants, then grimaced. “Oh, dear,” he said, sounding so ridiculously proper as he always did when he wasn’t fully in control of a situation and trying to deal with that. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>Blue laughed and removed her hands from his pyjama pants. She took an experimental taste off her index finger, and shrugged. Gansey watched her with owlish eyes. “What? You did the same.”</p><p>“I suppose I did…” he murmured, not seeming to be fully present, captivated by… <em>her</em>. She wiped her hand on his pyjama pants then and he yelped. “Well, that’s rude!”</p><p>She snorted. “Your mess, your bed: <em>your</em> pants,” she said. Gansey just rolled his eyes and moved off her. With surprisingly little self-consciousness, he stripped off his pyjama pants and threw them at the already-overflowing laundry basket before grabbing an identical—but clean—pair and tugging them on. He faced away from Blue as she did, and she peered at him, admiring the muscles of his back. She almost wished she could have seen him row in a race. Exhilarated by adrenaline and victory, sweating a little, hair tousled…</p><p>“Hang on…” The sound of Gansey’s voice as he climbed back onto the mattress brought her out of the small reverie. “Did you…? When I…?”</p><p>Blue blinked then said, “No. Almost,” she added.</p><p>“Oh…” he said, sounding dismayed. “I did… before… you didn’t…”</p><p>“It’s fine,” she said, because it was. “You already, um, before then.”</p><p>But he shook his head. “No, that’s not fair. I was raised to treat women with respect.”</p><p>She arched one impressively Calla-like eyebrow. “Does this count as respect?” she asked.</p><p>Gansey just grinned. “Why? Do you not feel<em> respected</em>, Blue Sargent, when I’m babbling your name like they’re the only words I remember?” Against her will, she blushed, and he laughed; victorious. “But,” he then said, “If you feel <em>dis</em>respected, please allow me to rectify it.” He ducked his head and kissed her stomach again, delighting in the softness of her skin. Then he pressed another kiss a little lower. And a third, lower still.</p><p>Her eyes widened. “Gansey…” she murmured, and he looked up at her, resting his cheek on her hipbone, eyes still bright. Not quite as dark, though. It wasn’t just want in his eyes, it was respect—<em>adoration</em>.</p><p>“I’ll stop if you tell me to, Jane,” he swore. He laved a fourth kiss just above the top of her underwear. A slow, open-mouthed thing, sure to leave another mark.</p><p>She didn’t tell him to stop.</p><p>He mouthed at her through the thin, damp cotton, then moved it aside, and the effect it had on her was immediate and intense. One hand flew to his hair, tangling in the short curls rather more aggressively than earlier, and he felt something thrill through him, let the image of being a little rough scatter across his mind for a moment before he reached up and threaded the fingers of her other hand through with his, his free arm wrapping around her leg and holding her in place.</p><p>It was, in some ways, much the same as using his hands, save for the strange vulnerability it inspired—vulnerability and power, not just in him but in her. Her hand fisted in his hair, but him crouched between her legs. He wasn’t perfect, and he would have happily learned how to become perfect as far as Blue was concerned, but he could hear the mounting pitch of her gasps, the breathless pants of his name until, with a mumbled noise that sounded a lot like his name, she stiffened again.</p><p>Grinning from ear to ear, he wiped the back of his hand carelessly and crawled back up to her, nipping the lobe of her ear lightly, the closest she dared come to a kiss. “You’re beautiful when you lose control, you know that?” he said.</p><p>“So’re you,” she replied. “You should do that more often.”</p><p>He brushed his nose over hers; a butterfly kiss. “I’m thinking we <em>both</em> should.”</p><p>She hummed. “No complaints there, I think.” Doubts and fears pressed at the edge of her consciousness, but she forced herself not to acknowledge them. Not here, not now, not lying in Gansey’s bed, bare chests pressed together. The sunrise would bring another day and she could worry about it then. For now, she would let herself indulge him; indulge <em>in</em> him.</p><p>Reaching up, she cupped his cheek again, and he caught her hand, kissing it. “I wish I could kiss you back,” she told him. She wished it so much it hurt.</p><p>“I do, too,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”</p><p>She smiled. “Me neither.”</p><p>With a shaking breath, he pressed a final kiss on her neck, just below her ear. Promises were meant to be sealed with kisses, after all. At least, the ones that mattered were.</p>
<hr/><p>Gansey woke several hours later, spooning Blue. Her head was tucked under his chin, his body curled around hers. She wore only a pair of cotton panties and a white t-shirt she’d borrowed from him when she’d gotten a little cold. He was still shirtless.</p><p>Sunlight filtered in through the huge windows of Monmouth Manufacturing, highlighting dust particles. For several long minutes, he didn’t move, and just allowed himself to revel in the sensation that was waking up in bed with Blue Sargent.</p><p>She stirred eventually, and went tense as she momentarily forgot where she was, why she was there, who she was with. Looking back over her shoulder to lock eyes with him, she smiled, then, as the memories of the previous night returned fully, paled.</p><p>Gansey grinned down at her. “Good morning, Jane,” he said, in a far cry from his normal jovial tone. This was muted and sweet; tender. Ducking his head, he nuzzled the back of her neck, pressed a kiss to the nub at the top of her spine.</p><p>“Mornin’,” she murmured back, turning over so she could burrow into his chest. “God… Calla’s gonna kill me when I get back.”</p><p>He chuckled. “She probably is,” he agreed, because there was no point in trying to lie to Blue about Calla’s wrath; it was legendary. “Do you have to go so quick, though?”</p><p>“I probably <em>should</em>,” she said. “I’m working at Nino’s tonight. Need to do some homework and have a shower first—and don’t suggest I could shower here,” she added, before he could even open his mouth. Never mind the fact that she would have to put on her clothes from the day before, she was <em>not </em>showering in that horrific excuse for a bathroom.</p><p>It was a great effort to untangle herself from Gansey’s embrace, but she did manage it. Shuffling back to Noah’s room, she found him sitting on his bed next to the pile of clothes she’d discarded the night before. He smiled at her, and she gave him a stern look. He just smiled broader.</p><p>Back in the main room, she cast her eyes onto the couch and noticed that Adam was still not there, but his shoes were. She was honestly relieved; the idea of his seeing her and Gansey sleeping in the same bed—and not just because it was Adam specifically—brought a rush of heat to her cheeks that was distinctly less pleasant than the ones Gansey had caused the night before.</p><p><em>God</em>, she thought. People were always more daring at night-time. She didn’t regret anything from the previous night, of that much she was sure, but it was still… a <em>lot</em>. She’d need to really think it over; make herself accept that it hadn’t been some erratic dream.</p><p>She was pulled from her thoughts when the door to Ronan’s room opened, and Gansey, expecting to see Ronan emerge, called out, “Morning, Lynch!”</p><p>Instead, Adam walked out. He looked at Blue, and at Gansey, and at Blue’s dishevelled hair, and at Gansey’s lack of a t-shirt, and said nothing. Blue looked at Adam, and the reddish mark peeking out of the collar of his t-shirt, and the look in his eyes that was more <em>Adam</em> than she’d seen in weeks, and said nothing. Gansey said, in his most casual voice, “Sleep well, Parrish?”</p><p>Adam raised an eyebrow. To Blue, he said, “You going home? I can drop you off on the way.”</p><p>Blue, not trusting herself to speak, just nodded. She cast a glance and Gansey, and he just said, “We’ll see you at Nino’s tonight?”</p><p>He said <em>we</em> and he phrased it like a question, but they both knew what he really meant.</p><p>Downstairs in the lot, sitting in the Hondayota, Blue tried very hard not to look at Adam. She wished that she had a car, that she had a license, that she could drive. At least then she would know where to look, what to do with her hands.</p><p>Adam broke the quiet between them. “Did you and Gansey—”</p><p>Horrified, Blue cut him off. “Kiss? No!”</p><p>He looked at her. “I was gonna say ‘have sex’, actually,” he drawled, looking amused. Blue went red again.</p><p>“No,” she repeated. “Did you and Ronan—”</p><p>“Have sex? No,” he replied.</p><p>Now Blue looked at him, expression withering. “I was gonna say ‘kiss’, actually.” She mimicked his tone.</p><p>Adam went red.</p>
<hr/><p>Up in Monmouth Manufacturing, Ronan emerged from his room, grunted a vague “Morning,” to Gansey and headed to the kitchen-bathroom-laundry as if this were a perfectly normal morning following a perfectly normal night.</p><p>Gansey ran his thumb over his bottom lip, pensive. Persephone and Calla and all the other women at 300 Fox Way had often espoused the concept that time was circular, that it was used over and over again by some people. People like sleeping kings and unquiet ghosts and resurrected scholars. The feel of his thumb across his lip was as familiar a touch as any, and yet it felt like the memory, the dream, the inevitability of Blue’s lips against his own, the kiss that would end his life within the year.</p><p>Even though that kiss would bring his death, he still wanted it—<em>her</em>. Even though he knew it was coming within a few months. He wouldn’t really be throwing anything away. It would be worth it, just to know the feel of her lips on his.</p><p>It would be worth death to kiss Blue Sargent.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I SWEAR to GOD this started out as a quick little writing exercise. I listen to the audiobooks (I haven't actually <em>read</em> the books) and Will Patton is an <em>excellent</em> narrator, so I tried to imagine him narrating and hopefully this sounds like it could at least <em>maybe</em> be an excerpt. I wanted to try and imitate Stiefvater's style. Then I got a mad craving for Blue/Gansey, read pretty much every Blue/Gansey fic on this site, and wrote this. The way Patton puts emphasis on words when he reads has probably resulted in me putting way more italics here than are actually in the books, though.</p><p>Either way, Ms Stiefvater has a really unique writing style that I adore. One thing I could never quite nail was sticking to the close-third-person narration; Stiefvater doesn’t shift perspective between characters within the scene, but I shift perspective a lot bc I like pointing out that both Blue and Gansey are pining harder than Christmas. It's been a while since I wrote a 'first-time'-style scene and it was really fun but also really tricky because it makes narrative sense for neither character to have prior experience, which of course means <em>awkwardness!!</em></p><p>I know Gansey’s bed is technically in the middle of the room and not against any walls but that’s such a sociopathic thing to do I’ve elected to ignore it.</p><p>Please let me know what you think!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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